ABSTRACT
Epidemics, dating back to the hunter-gatherer era, have quite complex and multidimensional processes. However, to understand epidemics, it is necessary to understand the nature of viruses, bacteria, or microbes as well as the social life in which they act. In this context economic activities that people carry out to survive and the tools they use for these activities have an important place in the emergence and spread of epidemic diseases. All forms of social production from the emergence of agriculture to the present include exploitation of nature. However, especially with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and then the industrialization process, many elements of nature as well as labor force have been subjected to diversification and intensification of commodification attacks. These attacks, with different reflections in the historical process, have threatened the existence of all life forms in the world. The aim of this study is to grasp the relationship between the emergence, spreading processes and consequences of epidemics and growth-oriented and profit-driven capitalist production through the literature review method. In line with this purpose, firstly, the historical course of the exploitation of natural assets is included in the study. Then colonization, urbanization and poverty; the interaction between deforestation, ecosystem destruction and climate change, and capitalism and epidemic diseases in the context of industrial agriculture and animal husbandry are discussed
Keywords : Epidemics, capitalism, exploitation of nature, agrobusiness and industrial livestock, urbanization, poverty